Sci-Bono Discovery Centre

Today we visited the  Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Johannesburg together with a group of other homeschoolers as our first field trip for the year.

The boys started their tour building walls with mini foam bricks. They had five minutes to move the bricks & mortar, build the walls of the “building”. It took some coordination & teamwork as well as parental assistance, but finally they got it done. Although it took way longer than the allocated time to build, they had loads of fun “experiencing” the mini Murray & Roberts building site.

After tearing down their newly built walls, packing up they all got to tour the rest of the exhibits.

his projector soccer “field” was a huge hit amongst the kids. The moving dinosaurs had some of the smaller kids quite scared.

There were just so many exhibits. So much to touch & figure out how it worked… the boys had a blast…

Whilst the little ones enjoyed a break from all the walking, in the Lego in the pit, the older kids puzzled Africa… now where do all those pieces go & what is that country called again?

Finally, teamwork paid off & Africa was once again complete… Off to the next section for some more stuff to see, feel & explore…

All in all, we must have spent at least 3 hours at the centre exploring & if it hadn’t been for Junior Engineering on our schedule for the afternoon, I’m quite sure the boys would have spent many more hours exploring the centre.

This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more. You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page. In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #5 – Science for this week's carnival. We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here’s to a very happy Valentine’s Day to one and all.

Left-Handed Learners

I was myself a left-handed learner and remember the pain and agony of having been forced to become right-handed. Handwriting was the one area where I failed all my life & this didn’t do my self-esteem much good. To this day I still write like a crab & am unable to even do my signature consistently the same.

According to Wikipedia there are 4 types of handedness:

• Right-handedness is most common. Right-handed people are more dexterous with their right hands when performing tasks. A variety of studies suggest that 70–90% of the world population is right-handed.^[4][5]
• Left-handedness is less common than right-handedness. Left-handed people are more dexterous with their left hands when performing tasks. A variety of studies suggest that approximately 10% of the world population is left-handed.^[6]
• Mixed-Handedness is the change of hand preference between different tasks. This is common in the population with about a 30% prevalence.^[1]
• Ambidexterity is exceptionally rare, although it can be learned. A truly ambidextrous person is able to do any task equally well with either hand. Those who learn it still tend to favour their originally dominant hand.^[2]

This article, How to Determine if Your Child is Left or Right Handed by Backup Care describes Hand Dominance as well as the Indicators for Hand Dominance.

Below are some links with info & suppliers that might help you avoid similar struggles with your left-handed learners.

Local Info & Suppliers

Left-handedness is not a curse by Isebell Gauche

Left-Handed Child in the Child Magazine. Left-handedness used to be a stigma that parents and teachers tried to eradicate. Here are some tips for keeping that in the past. by Denise Pape

 

Left-hand Learning is a South African website that offers a comprehensive service dedicated to left-hand learners, their parents and educators!! Providers of left-hand products and workshops. Email Tracy or contact +27 (83) 417-3316

are the main Importers and suppliers of ergonomically designed left handed stationery and accessories for children and adults. Email Admin or contact +27 (11) 794-1696

International Info & Suppliers

On this website you will find all the information and advice you’ll need to help left-handed children from nursery right through their school days to overcome the annoyances and frustrations of living in a right-handed world. You’ll find lots of ideas and resources specifically for left-handers, giving them the best techniques for adapting right-handed teaching and resources across the school curriculum. Armed with these techniques, left-handed children can learn new skills confidently and efficiently, without awkwardness or frustration, leaving them free to achieve their potential.

Left-handed products and information for lefthanders since 1968. Offers over 250 left handed products  that make a REAL difference -  see how YOU can benefit from  using left-handed equipment.

Rosemary West's Left Handed Page Your left hand, your right hand, and both sides of your brain

Please visit this page frequently as I will be posting regular updates as I find more resources.

Misha’s First Attempt at LapBooking

After weeks of dragging his feet filling out the numerous worksheets supplied by our curriculum provider I finally came across a human body copy work book. Then I stumbled on Lapbooking & thought I would give it a try & let Misha turn the worksheets & notebooking pages into a lapbook instead. At least this way we have less protest than with the worksheets… he could sit with tis for hours without complaining about getting tired.

Here's his first attempt...

Human Body LapBook VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Tutors, Co-ops & Other Group Activities

• Brightsparkz Tutors offer high quality private tuition for all subjects, grades 1 – 12.  The Tutors travel to you!

  • Johannesburg Tutors email or contact 073 145 7572
  • Cape Town Tutors email or contact 084 404 4006
  • Pretoria Tutors email or contact 073 145 7572
  • Port Elizabeth Tutors email or contact 084 404 4006

• Online Tutoring At Tutor.com, you get a professional online tutor whenever you need help. You work one-to-one with your tutor in our online classroom on your specific homework problem until it’s done.

Science

is a family orientated education support organization offering educational courses, outings and other educational services to parents and their children. Offering hands on practical work in: Earth Science, Astronomy, Model Making, Basic science, Outings + tours, Taylor made request, Atmospheric science, Working with maps, History, Photography & Family outings. Email Barry Bryant or contact +27 (11) 022-9791 or +27 (82) 331-8194

at the Science department of the The University of Pretoria. It was formerly known as the Exploratorium. They have regular science shows per grade and take around 50 kids. Email or contact Yvette on +27 (12) 420 3767

Technology

• Design & Technology Tutor in Discovery, West Rand near  the Discovery Hospital and the Discovery Methodist Church. Group classes offered at R100 per class, by an Interior Designer/ Draughtsman able to tutor in the following areas:

  • Graphic Design – Designing logo’s, fonts, graphic layouts etc…

  • Draughting – Computer draughting (Auto Cad, 3D Max) as well as sketching on paper.  Architectural structures, machines, organic structures…

  • 3D Modelling
  • 2D and 3D Animation
  • Technology today and how it applies to our world
  • How Stuff Works

For more information email or contact Edward dos Santos on +27 72 778 6563 or +27 11 674 3022 (Nat. Dip. Interior Design ’98- Wits Tech)

• Woodworking at Milty’s Training Academy, 121 Mainreef Road Technikon, Roodepoort. Contact Rose Sauerman on +27 (73) 113-6922 for info/bookings

Music

Individual as well as group lessons in Discovery – near the Discovery Hospital and Discovery Methodist Church, on the West Rand. Lessons are a half an hour once a week, Monday to Friday from 14h00 to 18h00 at very reasonable prices for ages 5 and up.

Email or contact Louise dos Santos +27 82 301 4797 or +27 11 674 3022 (Nat. Dip. Light Music ’97- Pretoria Tech)

Please email me if you know of any tutors or group activities worth recommending. Please include contact details, area as well as subject & comments.

Please visit this page frequently as I will be posting regular updates as I find more resources.

5 weeks down…

Wow, the time is just flying so fast these days. Jesse’s already finished his first month of homeschooling & Misha’s at 5 & half months. I’m amazed a the overall difference in the boys these days.

I thoroughly enjoy having them home. They both seem so much more relaxed. Misha is more confident & happy too. They even get along much better & fight less. As a matter of fact, the whole atmosphere in our home is much more settled & relaxed.

Boys at play.

We’re slowly getting into some sort of routine. Jesse seems to be coping fine with the homeschooling so far. I am however still slightly concerned about all the group work in his books & am rethinking what teaching aids we should add… I will be looking out for some teaching DVDs etc. to help him along. Of course I still catch them playing & wrestling often when I leave the room, but I enjoy seeing them bonding like this…

As for Misha, progress is still very slow. He is now able to read, however slow, but his confidence is getting better. He actually does a lot more reading aloud without being asked to these days. That in itself to me is major progress.

I’m needing to rethink the whole teaching strategy. He’s currently spending a whole lot of time doing worksheets when we’re not doing controlled outside play & instead of 20-30 minutes each, he takes anything from an hour and more to finish them. He’s interest just doesn’t seem to be there. I must admit, I cannot fault him on that. Doing worksheets all day, must be terribly boring. Now I’m considering Lapbooks as an alternative. What if I incorporated all those worksheets into lapbooks to make his learning a little less boring?

On Tuesday Misha had his first lesson back with Tannie Hettie for this year. She’s very happy with his improved reading & handwriting. The cursive handwriting is causing confusion, so she’ll be addressing that over the next few months. I trust that this year will be the last we’ll require her assistance.

For starters, I took him to Eyetek in Town Square across Hillfox yesterday for a complete developmental eye test. Turns out he is a little more far sighted  than usual & his eyes move too much when he concentrates. He will need to do some visual therapy & wear reading spectacles when doing school work as his eyes get too tired when focuses. By 10am this morning I received a phone call that  the spectacles were ready. That’s the fastest I’ve ever been able to collect a pair of specs.

 

Misha trying out his new specs.

This afternoon, Misha had his first afternoon of chess back at his old school  which will continue on Tuesdays & Thursdays. Jesse’s starting next Tuesday. I of course, need to get back to gym for my back & neck, which I will do twice a week from next week on after dropping them for chess.

Tomorrow Misha has a visual therapy session so I can learn exactly what visual exercises he needs to do daily & thereafter they go to Junior Engineering. That will mark the end of yet another school week for us.

“A poor surgeon hurts 1 person at a time. A poor teacher hurts  them in groups of 45”

Bible Studies

Local

curriculum is a ‘way,’ a journey, a guide to discover your child’s full potential. An easy, fun, step by step journey toward your child’s destiny. It consists of a Presenters Handbook that guides parents and teachers all the way from lesson 1 to 40. And a Children’s Handbook in colour that is full of fun and interactive activities.

International

Bible Islands is a rich virtual world of Bible stories, and learning games with reading, math, science reading, math, science, art and critical thinking. It provides endless hours of excitement and fun to kids of all ages with a wide range of games, quests, puzzles and interactive challenges for kids to engage with. It also offers exclusive movies from Glueworks Cinema, Max Lacado’s Hermie & Friends and more.

Homeschool Bible Curriculum is easy and engaging for children and parents! Teach and learn the major concepts, events, and characters of each book of the Bible through reading, listening and drawing.

Bible-based Parenting and Character Training Materials

Audio-visual Bible on DVD & other bible study materials.

Please visit this page frequently as I will be posting regular updates as I find more resources.

WoW another week down…

Ok so we started the week off slowly & then had 2 days off for birthday & sickness. Then on we took it easy on Thursday & on Friday I finally managed to get Misha to finish a chunk of bookwork.

Needles to say, I find the boys play wrestling on the classroom floor whenever I leave the room, and yet they still managed to get their bookwork done.

They both started their courses at Junior Engineering for Africa today. Misha’s doing Builder 1 & Jesse’s doing Mechanical Systems 3.

I’ve had a look at Jesse’s “Hands on Technology” manual & it seems that he’ll be doing a whole lot of hands-on learning that will benefit him for his Technology subject area. Their technology curriculum for Grades 4 – 9 has tree main content areas –

• Structures
• Processing & Systems
• Control

– and the specialised LEGO kits engage pupils in activities that assist with the conceptualisation of most of these concepts.

They’ve also had their first guitar lesson this weekend. The Learn & Master Guitar curriculum is going to be an awesome asset to our schooling. Fortunately daddy plays guitar & can help, but the curriculum is simple enough for me to take charge when he’s not around. It comes with a Teacher’s Guide, Lesson Book, 10 Session DVDs, 10 Bonus Workshop DVDs, 5 Jam Along Session DVDs & 2 Teacher’s DVDs and at $99 through HomeSchool Mom subscription, it’s so much more affordable than private guitar lessons for 2 @ R190 a session.

Misha’s had his first sleepover at an old school friend. Feedback from this mommy is that he’s a completely different child. More relaxed, confident & happy. She said he even speaks to her now, which he never used to before.

Well all in all, at least it seems we’re doing something right & bringing them home has been the best thing for them…

Mom’s Day Off

I just couldn’t get my boys into the classroom today. According to them mom’s not allowed to work on her birthday. Since teaching’s now my job I was to have the day off. This of course, meant that they cannot do school, because they must have a teacher for school. Now how on earth could I argue with such logic. After all, it is my birthday today… :)

According to them Daddy spread the rumour that there's no school today but suspected they might be chancing... so I got them baking cake for HomeEd...

Who said learning Maths couldn’t be fun? I got Misha to measure the ingredients for my birthday cake. He insisted on decorating the cake too & of course he had lots of practice counting out the 41 candles he insisted had to be on there.

My master decorator, hard at work finishing off mom's birthday cake...

All done with mom's birthday cake...

oh my, so many candles

Of course, my little sis stopped by later to come help us grade the finished products and also help Jesse make another batch of fudge because his last batch turned out to be toffee-fudge. This time it was a success & might I add, it tastes yummy… 3rd time lucky, they say. ;)

Jesse’s Fudge

Back to School

2010 has come & gone &  we’ve already had our first school day for 2011 today.

I decided to ease into it slowly so the boys started off with Wii Fit. They took it very easy, did a pathway on Fire Safety from Lesson Pathways... We’ll have 2 more slow days & next week we're into full swing with lessons…

They also got to help daddy with some more finishing touches in the classroom, which is now almost complete…

We decided to move the bookshelves to the wall where the blackboard was to go & it’s added a little more width to to the room. Jesse no longer has to sit under the window, but also has a corner with space to put posters relative to his learning.

It needs just a few more minor additions & some more posters for fun & colour, but for all intents & purposes the boys will able able to work at their desks from tomorrow… not to shabby if I may say so myself.

Thank you daddy for all the hard work you put into this classroom.

Happy New Year!!!

Please remember you can continue to follow this blog at

Trixi's HomeSchool Academy

Our Wish For You:

 
Comfort on difficult days,
Smiles when sadness intrudes,
Rainbows to follow the clouds,
...Laughter to kiss your lips,
Sunsets to warm your heart,
Gentle hugs when spirits sag,
Friendships to brighten you being'
Beauty for your eyes to see,
Confidence for when you doubt,
Faith so that you can believe,
Courage to know yourself,
Patience to accept the truth,
And love to complete your life.

 

Wishing you all God’s very richest blessings for an awesome 2011.

We’re Moving

SHi there, I recently discovered HomeschoolBlogger.com and have decided to move my HomeSchooling blog across there because its content is more relevant for that site. You can now visit us at Trixi's HomeSchool Academy.

In the interim I’m wising you a very blessed Christmas Season and all the best for 2011.
Looking forward to seeing you at our new home with HomeschoolBlogger.com soon.
Kind regards & God bless
Trys

Home Education Recourses

Although I’ve looked at homeschooling for about 3 years, I’ve spent at least 6-8 months doing intensive research on homeschooling before I finally adhered to my husband’s pleas to homeschool and took the plunge with our youngest in August last year due to learning problems at school.

I’ve done quite a bit of surfing lately and found many useful sites for homeschooling assistance. My head is still spinning from information overload…

I must, quite honestly, admit that all the info available made for loads of reading & at times was quite overwhelming. I was bookmarking pages & later found that I couldn’t remember why I bookmarked certain pages. Hence I decided to add these to my blog with descriptions in order to help me find material again at a later stage.

Since research is so time consuming, I thought I’d also share the great links I found, in order to save some other "newbie" mom the time I spent finding it…

Support Groups

• Legal defence fund for home educating families.

• has so much to offer all South African homeschoolers in every province, including …membership, community forums, chats, great articles, links to great websites, links to forums, events calendars (that we can add to!) and more.

• 

• HomeSchooling SA @ Yahoo Groups Homeschooling in South  Africa

• HS Kitchen Table @ Yahoo Groups Practical Support for South  African Homeschoolers

• Tuisonderwys @ Yahoo Groups Gesprekgroep oor tuisonderwys in Suid-Afrika.

• CIEatHome @ YahooGroups A Group for South African Homeschoolers preparing for the Cambridge International Examinations privately or through a curriculum provider. Membership is open to both students and parents current or past. The aim is to link with one another for support & to share information, resources & experiences relating to CIE while homeschooling.

• HomeSchool SA is a friendly supportive group where homeschool families can gather to discuss anything related to homeschooling in South Africa. It is particularly designed to assist and encourage new homeschool families by providing information and links to curricula and homeschool methods, as well as support. Those new and old to homeschool, are welcome to post their questions and suggestions.

• SA Homeschool Curriculum South African Homeschoolers – Buy and Sell Used Homeschool Curriculum here! List your posts as WANTED or FOR SALE and when listing items, give a price excl. postage and the condition of the item. You then contact the seller directly and organise the purchase, payment and postage.

• Christian Home Education and Homeschooling Resource. This site offers home education information, articles, resource and suggested reading to Christian homeschoolers in the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.

• Facebook

  • HomeschoolHUB
  • Homeschooling in South Africa
  • Christian Homeschooling in South Africa
  • Homeschool Lapbooks
  • Lapbook Lessons
  • Lapbooking for Learning
  • Homeschool Kamp
  • Robotics Association of South Africa
  • Free Homeschooling 101
  • Homeschool for Free

• The premier online community for homeschool moms! Find encouragement and support for the journey! Forum, reviews, chat, groups & more.

2.   Organisers, Planners, Schedulers, etc.

3.   Informative Pages & Blogs

4.   Learning Styles

5.   Brain Dominance

6.   Left Handed Learners

7.   Building a Solid Foundation

8.   Home Educating a Struggling Learner

9.   Unschooling

10. Curricula

11. Tutors, Co-ops & Other Group Activities

12. Grades 8 – 12 / Matric

13. Matric Support

14. eLearning

15. Free Educational Games & Software

16. Android Apps for Home Education

16. iPad Apps for Home Education

17. Teaching Aids

• Teacher Resources
• Worksheets, Games etc.
• Manipulates
• Educational Toys & Games
• Software
• Kid Safe Internet Browsers
  • Zoodles A safe Kid Mode for every device. We help your children find the age appropriate games that make learning fun. Ad blocking, Educational Subjects & Character Blocking.
  • KidZui Internet for Kids Get the FREE Kids Browser stuffed with fun curated by hundreds of parents & teachers. KidZui gives kids the freedom to explore the Internet safely. * Millions of kid-friendly YouTube videos, online games, and websites * All pre-screened and approved by editorial staff, teachers, and parents * Weekly activity reports keep you in touch with your child’s evolving interests.

Both of these offer free basic features as well as a membership option that offers additional features.

• Tutors, Co-Ops & Other Group Activities

18. Book Stores

19. Extra Curricular Activities

20. Field Trip Venues

Free Recourse Pages

Blogs & Pages

PS:

Here’s a for your internet explorer to help you quickly find homeschooling Blogs, Community, Top Sites, Freebies and Feeds. It offers

• 100 Top Homeschooling Sites
• Popular homeschooling blogs
• Built in Google search engine
• Searches by specific categories helpful to moms and homeschoolers
• One click access to homeschool communities and forums
• Post to your Facebook from the toolbar
• RSS feeds
• Email notifier that manages all your email accounts
• Tools such as the weather forecast, To Do list and a radio player
• Pop up blocker
• And more…

This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more.  You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page.   In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #8 – Co-ops and Support Groups for this week’s carnival.  We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!

Please visit this page frequently as I will be posting regular updates as I find more resources.